Waterlines, watermarks

The dissertation is an outcome of interdisciplinary research projects on the environmental history of Vienna’s urban waterscape and the reconstruction of the city’s riverine landscapes. It advocates the joint study of the evolution of fluvial and urban form, tracing the ‘structural permanence’ of diverse running waters during a period of massive urban transformation from early modern times to the present. Focussing on the material effects, side-effects and afterlives of socio-natural processes renders novel perspectives on the reconstruction of city development and to urban morphological theory.

Water proves to be a prerequisite for settlement development, a key factor in settlement site selection and of wide morphogenetic impact on settlement structures over several scales. Six detailed case studies explore the co-evolution of Vienna’s urban fabric and waterscape. They show that long-term studies are vital in understanding the genesis of urban water bodies and urban form as a product of socio-natural processes. The cases cover a wide spectrum of aquatic landscapes and urban spaces, epochs and topics:

Chapter 4 traces the stabilisation and urbanisation of the Danube floodplain by reconstructing the development of three ‘amphibious’ urban areas. For more than five centuries, the island of Unterer Werd (or Leopoldstadt) was the city’s most important suburb in the flood-prone, dynamic riverine territory adjacent to the old city centre. The vast Donaustadt-area was a by-product of the Great Danube Regulation between 1870 and 1876. It was the city’s most extensive, yet never completed, urban ensemble of the industrialisation era. Much older, Erdberger Mais is the result of largely futile attempts to regulate the Danube in the 17th century. The silted meander loop was transformed to become the city’s largest market garden area by the late 1700s and underwent major transformation since the late 19th century—conserving and finally erasing the traces of the area’s aquatic past. Chapter 5 discusses the Wiener Neustädter Kanal, a shipping canal opened in 1803. As the only entirely artificial watercourse in Vienna, it was also used to power water mills and as a freshwater supply. Within the city’s ambit it functioned only few decades for its original purpose. Its bed was remodelled into railway lines between 1848 and 1879. This inner-city transport corridor persists until today. Chapter 6 explores the large impact of a small water body. Währinger Bach is one of the minor tributaries flowing through what used to be Vienna’s rural northern suburbs. Like most of the other urban brooks, it was integrated into the emerging waterborne sewage network in the mid-1800s. Several decades later, the structural permanence of the creek resulted in surprising patterns of urban transformation. Wienfluss (Wien River) was the largest and most unpredictable of the Danube’s tributaries close to the city. Chapter 7 examines its comprehensive regulation over a stretch of 17 kilometres. Starting in 1894, this multifunctional large-scale urban project not only considerably reshaped the townscape but can be understood as an early ‘laboratory’ of the functional city of the 20th century. Taken together, the cases allow for a comprehensive re-evaluation of Vienna’s co-evolution over several centuries, comprising morphological studies from the micro- to the macro level.

The doctoral dissertation was awarded the Rudolf-Wurzer-Preis für Raumplanung in 2020.

Research project URBWATER

Book project Wasser Stadt Wien